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Portrait of Arthur L. Schawlow
Photo: Jose Mercado / Stanford News Service, Stanford News Service · CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Nobel Prize in Physics · 1981

Arthur L. Schawlow

He co-wrote the 1958 blueprint for the laser, then used laser light to measure atoms with new precision.

The Nobel citation: “for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy”
Born
May 5, 1921, Mount Vernon, NY, USA
Died
April 28, 1999, Palo Alto, CA, USA
Shared with
Nicolaas Bloembergen, Kai M. Siegbahn
Affiliation at the time
Stanford University, USA

Physics prize

1981

Shared with 2 other laureates.

Age that year

60years

Born in 1921.

Headline credited impact

$8.8–14.3billion in economic value

Cumulative worldwide sales of lasers, devices the 1958 Schawlow-Townes paper helped make possible. How it was built

Sources cited

23

Fact-checked September 24, 2026.

  • At the 1981 Nobel ceremony he gave the King of Sweden a measuring stick: a 'ruler for a ruler'.
  • Hunting for an edible laser, he and Theodor Hänsch tried all 12 flavours of Knox gelatin. None worked until they added a laser dye.
  • In 1975 he and Hänsch proposed cooling atoms with laser light. He left it out of his Nobel lecture; laser cooling went on to earn the 1997 Nobel Prize.
  • He did not learn that his father was Jewish until he was 17.
  • His Depression-era scholarship covered physics but not engineering, so the would-be radio engineer became a physicist.

The breakthrough

Blueprint for the laser, then laser spectroscopy (1958-1981)

In 1957 and 1958 Schawlow and his brother-in-law Charles Townes worked out how to make a 'maser', a device that amplifies microwaves, work with visible and infrared light instead. Their 1958 paper, 'Infrared and Optical Masers', set out the conditions such a device would need. Schawlow's key idea was to put two parallel mirrors at the ends so light bounces back and forth, building up into one pure, tightly aimed beam. That is still the basic design of a laser. The paper set off a race, and in 1960 Theodore Maiman built the first working laser. Schawlow then turned the laser into a tool for studying atoms. Every kind of atom absorbs light only at certain exact colours, like a barcode. But atoms in a gas zip around, and their motion smears those colours, just as a passing siren changes pitch. In Schawlow's Stanford group, Theodor Hänsch developed a trick, found independently by Christian Bordé in France: split a laser beam in two and send the halves through a gas from opposite sides. Only atoms standing still could respond to both beams, so the smearing vanished. This let them see fine details in the spectrum of hydrogen, the simplest atom, and pin down the Rydberg constant, a basic number of nature, about 80 times more precisely than before. The Nobel Prize honoured this work.[2],[3],[4],[5],[8]

“To do successful research, you don't need to know everything, you just need to know one thing that isn't known.”
Arthur L. Schawlow, Advice he gave young scientists who felt swamped by information, as recalled by Steven Chu and Charles Townes in his National Academy of Sciences memoir.[5]

What it meant for humanity

Few inventions touch daily life as widely as the laser. Lasers carry internet traffic through optical fibres, read barcodes and discs, print documents, cut and weld metal, help make computer chips, and are used in eye surgery, skin treatments and some cancer treatments. Schawlow and Townes did not build the first laser, but the Nobel committee judged their 1958 paper the decisive step that launched the whole field. Even Schawlow's jokes had practical results. His gelatin 'edible laser' experiment with Theodor Hänsch inspired Bell Labs researchers to make the first distributed feedback laser, a type now widely used in long-distance fibre-optic communication. His party trick of popping a blue balloon inside a clear one showed that light can reach inside an object without breaking its surface, the idea behind laser repair of detached retinas. His laser spectroscopy methods let scientists detect and study very small numbers of atoms, measure basic constants of nature more precisely, and sort out tangled molecular spectra. His 1975 proposal with Hänsch to cool atoms with laser light was shown to work about a decade later. Laser cooling won the 1997 Nobel Prize and led to the 2001 prize for Bose-Einstein condensates, a new state of matter, and it opened the way to more precise atomic clocks. He also trained people: Hänsch shared the 2005 Nobel Prize, and Schawlow persuaded Steven Chu to come to Stanford. Outside physics, Schawlow and his wife spent decades seeking help for their autistic son and helped re-establish the group home in Paradise, California, where their son lived; it was later named the Arthur Schawlow Center and went on serving adults with disabilities.

  • The Nobel committee called the 1958 Schawlow-Townes paper the decisive contribution that started the whole field of lasers.[3],[8]
  • In his Stanford group, Hänsch and students refined hydrogen measurements until the Rydberg constant was known about 80 times more precisely than before.[4],[5]
  • Their 1975 laser-cooling proposal was shown to work about ten years later and led to the 1997 Nobel Prize for laser cooling and trapping of atoms.[5],[9],[10]
  • A playful gelatin laser experiment inspired the distributed feedback laser, now widely used in long-distance fibre-optic links.[5],[6]
  • He helped put the Paradise, California, group home where his autistic son lived on a nonprofit footing; it was later renamed the Arthur Schawlow Center.[5],[6]

Impact in numbers

Schawlow's impact runs along two tracks. The first is the laser itself. His 1958 paper with Townes gave the field its starting design, and lasers now sit inside telecommunications, manufacturing, medicine, retail and research. The dollar figure below counts only sales of lasers themselves and credits him with a small share; it leaves out the far larger value of the fibre networks, chips and surgeries lasers make possible. The second track is measurement. Laser spectroscopy made it possible to read the fine structure of atoms without the blur of their motion, to detect single atoms, and to test the basic theory of hydrogen. His throwaway 1975 idea of laser cooling became a whole field, leading to two Nobel Prizes, new states of matter and a path to better atomic clocks. Much of this influence passed through people he trained and encouraged, such as Hänsch and Chu, and it cannot fairly be turned into a number.

TechnologyCommunicationHealthEconomyFundamental science

Each number is the laureate’s credited share of a real-world outcome, cumulative to 2025. The whole outcome, the share of credit, and the reasoning are shown so you can check the arithmetic. Outcomes shared with other laureates are counted once on the impact page.

  • Low confidenceDirectModeledTechnology

    Cumulative worldwide sales of lasers, devices the 1958 Schawlow-Townes paper helped make possible

    $8.8–14.3

    billion in economic value, credited share

    That is 3% of $293–475 billion in economic value since 1960.

    How this number was built

    Laser Focus World puts world laser sales at $3.22B in 1997, up 14% from 1996 (so $2.82B), then $8.8B (2000), $5.62B (2001), $13.07B (2017) and $13.76B (2018); Wikipedia gives $5.39B for 2004; MarketsandMarkets gives $20.0B (2024) and $21.82B (2025). Filling gaps with steady growth, 2000-2025 sums to about $287B nominal. Low: that plus the sourced 1996-97 years, not inflated, about $293B. High: 2000-2025 without the 2004 dip, in 2024 dollars via BLS CPI-U, about $390B; plus 1960-1999 modeled by running 1996 back at 14% a year and adding 1998 ($3.8B forecast) and 1999 ($4.6B assumed): $34B nominal, about $86B in 2024 dollars. Total about $475B. Sales exclude the far larger value lasers enable. Share 0.03: the 1958 Schawlow-Townes paper was decisive, but Townes, Gould, Prokhorov, Basov, Maiman, diode and fibre inventors and industry were essential.[3],[16],[17],[18],[19],[20],[23]

    Sources: Laser Focus World; Laser Focus World; Wikipedia; MarketsandMarkets; US Bureau of Labor Statistics; Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org; Laser Focus World

The double edge

Schawlow's own science caused no documented harm, but two issues deserve mention. First, he publicly championed facilitated communication, an autism method in which a helper assists a person who cannot speak as they spell out words. In 1993 he argued that most critical studies were flawed. Later research showed the helpers were usually the real authors of the messages, and the method was linked to false accusations of abuse; speech professionals now call it discredited. Second, the laser he helped invent is a military tool as well as a civilian one, used to mark targets and measure range; lasers designed to blind soldiers were banned by a 1995 UN protocol. The laser patent granted to Bell Labs for his and Townes's work also sparked a long legal fight with Gordon Gould.

  • Moderate

    Promoting facilitated communication

    Schawlow and his wife used facilitated communication with their autistic son, and in 1993 he told Education Week that most studies critical of it were flawed. ASHA's 2018 position statement calls the technique discredited, says messages are authored by the facilitator, and links it to preventable harms including false allegations of sexual abuse.[6],[14],[15]

  • Moderate

    Military uses of lasers

    Lasers are used by militaries to mark targets and measure range. Weapons designed to cause permanent blindness were banned by Protocol IV of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, issued in 1995 and in force since 1998. Schawlow did not work on weapons.[16],[21]

  • Minor

    Patent dispute over who invented the laser

    The US Patent Office turned down Gordon Gould's 1959 laser application and in 1960 granted Bell Labs, Schawlow's employer, a patent on the Schawlow-Townes design. This set off a legal fight over laser rights lasting about 28 years, and some credit Gould with inventing the laser.[7],[16]

Against the odds

Schawlow's father left Riga around 1911 to study engineering in Germany, arrived too late for the term, and settled in New York instead. Arthur grew up in Toronto from age three. He was raised Protestant and did not know of his Jewish ancestry until he was 17, and our sources record no antisemitism aimed at him. But the city around him was hostile to Jews. For much of the early 20th century, prejudice against Jews was open and widely tolerated in Canada: many businesses would not hire them, universities capped their numbers, and some neighbourhoods barred them from buying or renting homes. In August 1933, when Schawlow was 12, Nazi-inspired youths waving a swastika at a Toronto baseball game set off the Christie Pits riot, among the most serious episodes of ethnic violence Canada has seen. His own hardship was economic. His high school years fell in the depths of the Great Depression, his father's insurance salary could not pay for university, and only three or four of his roughly 60 classmates went on to higher education. A scholarship got him in, but only to study physics. The Second World War then delayed his graduate studies. The Jewish community of Riga, his father's home city, was almost entirely murdered in the Holocaust.

  • 1937

    Poverty

    During the Depression his father's salary as an insurance agent could not cover university fees. Only a scholarship, available in arts and science but not engineering, let him enrol at the University of Toronto at 16.[2],[6]

  • 1933

    Discrimination

    He grew up in Toronto when prejudice against Jews was widely tolerated in Canada, in jobs, housing and university admission. In August 1933, when he was 12, a swastika banner at a Toronto baseball game set off the Christie Pits riot. Our sources do not say he was targeted himself.[12]

  • 1941

    War

    The Second World War interrupted his graduate studies. He taught armed-service personnel at the university and worked on microwave antennas at Research Enterprises, a radar factory, before returning to graduate work in 1945.[2],[5],[6]

  • 1941

    Other

    Riga, the city his father left, lost almost all of its roughly 40,000 Jews in the Holocaust, including at least 25,000 shot in the Rumbula Forest in 1941. Our sources do not say whether any of his relatives were among them.[2],[13]

Jewish background

Jewish fatherDistant from Jewish identity

Schawlow's father, also named Arthur, came from Riga in Latvia and was Jewish; his mother, Helen Mason, was Canadian. Neither parent liked to talk about their background, and he did not learn that his father was Jewish until he was 17. He and his older sister Rosemary were raised as Protestants. As an adult he called himself a fairly orthodox Protestant, and later in life he attended a Methodist church. He meets our standard through his Jewish father, but he did not identify as Jewish.[2],[5],[6],[7],[22]

Key dates

  1. May 5, 1921

    Born in Mount Vernon, New York, to a father from Riga and a Canadian mother.[1],[2]

  2. 1924

    Family moves to Toronto, where he grows up while keeping US citizenship.[2],[5]

  3. 1941

    Graduates from the University of Toronto in mathematics and physics as Canada is at war; teaches service personnel and then works on radar.[2],[7]

  4. 1949

    Earns his PhD at Toronto under spectroscopist Malcolm Crawford and joins Charles Townes at Columbia University as a postdoc.[2],[5],[7]

  5. 1951

    Marries Aurelia Townes, Charles Townes's younger sister, and joins Bell Telephone Laboratories.[2],[5],[6]

  6. 1955

    Publishes the textbook Microwave Spectroscopy with Townes.[2],[5]

  7. December 15, 1958

    Schawlow and Townes publish 'Infrared and Optical Masers', the design paper that launched the laser.[3],[8]

  8. 1961

    Becomes professor of physics at Stanford University, where he builds a laser spectroscopy group.[2],[6],[11]

  9. 1975

    With Theodor Hänsch proposes cooling gases with laser light; serves as president of the Optical Society of America.[2],[5],[9],[11]

  10. 1981

    Shares the Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for laser spectroscopy; also serves as president of the American Physical Society.[1],[2],[3]

  11. 1991

    Retires from teaching and receives the National Medal of Science; his wife Aurelia dies in a car accident.[2],[5],[6]

  12. April 28, 1999

    Dies of leukemia in Palo Alto, California, shortly before his 78th birthday.[1],[5]

Sources

  1. 1.Arthur L. Schawlow – Facts · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
  2. 2.Arthur L. Schawlow – Biographical (with 1991 addendum) · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Foundation), 1981
  3. 3.The Nobel Prize in Physics 1981 – Press release · Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org, 1981
  4. 4.Spectroscopy in a New Light (Nobel lecture, 8 December 1981) · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Foundation), 1981
  5. 5.Arthur Schawlow 1921-1999, Biographical Memoirs vol. 83, by Steven Chu and Charles H. Townes · National Academy of Sciences, 2003
  6. 6.Credible (and Edible) Lasers: The Life of Arthur L. Schawlow, by Patricia Daukantas · Optics & Photonics News (Optica), 2011
  7. 7.Arthur Leonard Schawlow · Wikipedia
  8. 8.Infrared and Optical Masers, by A. L. Schawlow and C. H. Townes, Physical Review 112, 1940 · American Physical Society, 1958
  9. 9.Cooling of gases by laser radiation, by T. W. Hänsch and A. L. Schawlow, Optics Communications 13, 68 · Elsevier, 1975
  10. 10.The Nobel Prize in Physics 1997 – Press release · Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org, 1997
  11. 11.Arthur L. Schawlow (biography) · Optica
  12. 12.Christie Pits Riot, by Jamie Michaels · The Canadian Encyclopedia (Historica Canada), 2020
  13. 13.Riga · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  14. 14.Facilitated Communication Under New Scrutiny, by Debra Viadero · Education Week, 1993
  15. 15.Facilitated Communication (Position Statement PS2018-00352) · American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2018
  16. 16.Laser · Wikipedia
  17. 17.Review and forecast of the laser markets, Part I: Nondiode lasers, by Kathy Kincade and Stephen G. Anderson · Laser Focus World, 2002
  18. 18.Annual Laser Market Review & Forecast 2019: What goes up... · Laser Focus World, 2019
  19. 19.Laser Technology Market report 2024-2029 (summary page) · MarketsandMarkets, 2025
  20. 20.Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), series CUUR0000SA0 · US Bureau of Labor Statistics
  21. 21.Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons · Wikipedia
  22. 22.The religion of Arthur Schawlow (quoting Denis Brian, The Voice of Genius, 1995, pp. 241-242), archived copy · Adherents.com via Internet Archive, 2007
  23. 23.Review and forecast of laser markets: 1998, Part I · Laser Focus World, 1998

Fact-checked on September 24, 2026 by a separate AI fact-checking pass that re-opened the sources, with 11 corrections made. How we check

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